Thursday, 25 August 2016

Media Quotes of the Week: From reporter tells Corbyn 'we ask the questions' to an image of a bombed out boy in Aleppo brings hope and despair

Sky News reporter to Jeremy Corbyn, quoted by the Mirror: "We live in a free country. It's about what I want to ask, not what you want me to ask about."

The Daily Telegraph in a leader: "The Guardian stated that “Jeremy Corbyn, famed for standing up for his principles, sat down for them”. Only it was all a sham. The Labour leader did have a seat on the train and in CCTV footage released by Virgin, the train operator, he can be seen occupying it.The man who has supposedly brought us the 'new politics' turns out to be just as a shameless an exponent of the media stunt as all the others, only less competent."

The Guardian in a leader: "No one can pretend that traingate is one of most important news stories of the era. All the same it is a very emblematic tale of our times. For one thing, it would not have happened in the pre-internet age at all, because even if Mr Corbyn had actually been compelled to sit on a train carriage floor on the way to Newcastle a generation ago, no one would have been there to capture an image of it, no newspaper would have been able to post the video of his denunciation of privatisation, and there would have been no CCTV footage of him walking past unreserved and unoccupied seats either. Whether the whole thing was an amateurish political stunt by the Labour leader, as Mr Branson implies, or rotten treatment by a privatised company, as Mr Corbyn claimed, no one else would have ever heard about it anyway."

Donald J. Trump‏ @realDonaldTrump on Twitter: "It is being reported by virtually everyone, and is a fact, that the media pile on against me is the worst in American political history!"

The NUJ Newsquest London chapel in a statement: "Newsquest's willingness to lie to the trade press, by denying just how desperately under-resourced its newsrooms are, came as no surprise to the teams working in them. Our journalists remain in the dark about what the managing director's plans are, because he has not communicated with us. This chips away at our morale and emotional well-being week by week. Newspapers covering Merton and Epsom have been staffed by lone trainees with no permanent editor for months, while the 142-year-old Richmond and Twickenham Times will have just one trainee reporter from September. ”

Former BBC director general Mark Thompson in the Sunday Times Magazine [£] on the sacking of Jeremy Clarkson: “Clarkson can be a deeply objectionable individual, and I say that as a friend. I don’t think people should punch their colleagues. It’s hard to keep them if they do. But I would say his pungent, transgressive, slightly out-of-control talent was something the BBC could ill afford to lose. He spoke to people who didn’t find much else in the BBC. The fact no one could ever quite believe the BBC allowed Top Gear to go out was a precious thing to hang on to. As a fan, I regret its passing.”

Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday: "Anjem Choudary, broadcasting’s favourite Islamist loudmouth, was and is a vain, bloviating, blowhard fraud, another boozy drug-taking low-life posing as a serious person. He found a role and fools to indulge him, many in the same media who now queue up to rejoice at his imprisonment."

Piers Morgan interviewed in The Times [£]: “This idea that you can’t ever break the law as a journalist is plainly ridiculous. Sometimes it’s an essential tool of journalism. And to pretend otherwise is very naive about the reality. Whether it’s Wikileaks or MPs’ expenses, law-breaking by journalists is fine if public interest outweighs the criminality and you can express why you could only get this information through illegal means. It’s perfectly reasonable.”

Press Recognition Panel chairman David Wolfe QC, as reported by Press Gazette: "Keen to ensure that everybody has the fullest opportunity to respond to the application so that we in turn have the fullest possible basis to make a robust and independent decision on Impress’s application, the board has today decided to defer its consideration of the Impress application to allow a 20 working day further call for information."

Mustafa al-Sarout, the Aleppo-based journalist whose film of young Omran Daqneesh after he was pulled from the rubble of a bombed building went viral, quoted by the Guardian: “I’ve seen so many children rescued out of the rubble, but this child, with his innocence, he had no clue what was going on. He put his hand on his face and saw blood. He didn’t know even what happened to him. I’ve photographed a lot of airstrikes in Aleppo, but there was so much there in his face, the blood and the dust mixed, at that age.”

The Times [£] in a leader: "Since heartrending pictures of the five-year-old boy flashed round the globe, doctors who patched him up have expressed anger that it takes an apparently random image to focus international attention on a disaster the world seems to be trying to ignore. Their frustration is understandable. Omran was lucky. The photographer who took his picture had already helped to pick three dead children from the rubble. The traumatised boy has become a symbol nevertheless of hope as well as despair."

About Me

I am a freelance journalist based in the UK and was deputy editor of Press Gazette, the journalists' magazine, from 1993 until 2006. I want to give an independent view on media matters.
You can contact me with stories, ideas and comments by email at jon.slattery369@btinternet.com You can also follow me on Twitter @jonslattery